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Fun stuff to do with sourdough

A couple of days ago I did my sourdough workshop. It meant I had to prepare a loaf (which was all eaten), a bulk rise, and during the workshop we put together another bulk rise. It meant I had quite a lot of doughy product to sort out after the workshop.
The loaf that had proofed overnight in the fridge after enduring about 3 hours of proofing at room temperature was predictably overproofed. I should not have slashed it. Oh well. Taste was still fine.
What I decided to do with half the dough we put together was to make a BBQ’d herbed tea biscuit (sort of) dinner flatbread.
I took about half the dough (about 400g) which had been refrigerated overnight and had risen slightly & rolled it out on a floured surface until it was about 1/2” thick.
I then went out and cut some fresh oregano, thyme, basil and chives, cut them up and spread them on the dough. Garlic and pepper too.
Next I laid the inside 70% of the surface with generous slices of unsalted butter, and folded the corners and sides over so that no butter was showing.

In the middle of folding and rolling. Its important the butter does not squeeze through.

Following the technique used for laminated pastries – puff pastries, croissants and the like, I folded the dough gently in 3, rolled it out gently, being sure to flour it so nothing would stick. I repeated this “fold in 3 then roll out” sequence a number of times – maybe 6-8. Anytime some butter showed up, I slapped a little flour on it.
For the final roll out I left it at approximately ½” or 1.5 cm thick in a somewhat oval shape, on parchment paper, for about an hour.
After an hour, turned on the BBQ, and once hot, I gently turned the dough off the parchment paper and onto the BBQ. I’m afraid the timings here aren’t a fine science: you want to cook it through. This amounts to 2-3 minutes on each side. What happens is the dough cooks, the butter melts and evaporates, infusing into the dough and helping it to rise, as its trapped by the flour layers around it.
It can be served either as a large flatbread, or cut into squares and served as tea biscuits.
What you get is a quite decadent buttery herby dinner flatbread. Yum!

baguette and pitas about to be baked

The next day…..

But there was another chunk of dough as well, languishing in the fridge. What to do with it? Well I had put on chickpeas to soak – thinking humus and falafel. So what more logical than to do some pita to accompany it. Again I had about 400g of dough to play with. Not enough.
So what I did was to add some more dough – white flour: 400g flour, 240g water, 8g of salt: all ‘baker’s ratio’. I was also a little concerned that the starter would be a little old so I added a pinch – truly no more – of yeast as well. Four hours later and it was nicely risen to become little pitas and a baguette. The dough in the fridge had become a kind of mother dough. Here I wanted something like the choices I get at a sub shop. I added italian herbs, garlic and Asiago cheese on top. For the pitas I wanted fairly thick soft ones that could hold a falafel or other sandwich material.

It all worked out well. The baguette is delish as are the pitas. All this goes to show what kind of flexibility and on the spot creativity you can get with a chunk of old sourdough bulk rise.